Beacon Registry

Giving passengers with mobile devices the right information at the right time.

With Beacon Registry, passengers receive location-relevant information on their mobile devices. SITA, along with our airline and airport partners, is using Beacon Registry to provide passengers with directions, walk times to gate, alerts about boarding - even airport restaurant specials.

SITA Lab has been researching Bluetooth low-energy beacons and believe that the iBeacon technology from Apple has great potential to trigger better passenger experiences in airline and airport apps.

But one of our key findings is that the ATI needs a consistent deployment for beacons in airports across the world. To this end, we have developed a Common Use Beacon Registry and are working with leading airports, airlines and industry bodies like IATA and ACI to define standards around how to deploy and use beacons for maximum interoperability.

The Common Use Registry provides app developers with information about beacons deployed at airports, and contextual information for airline/airport apps to create amazing passenger experiences. For example, the registry can tell app developers if a beacon is at a lounge, check-in, security area, baggage carousel or gate and specifically which gate. Combining this indoor-location information with passenger itinerary data creates a wide range of use cases that can be implemented by app developers.

SITA will continue to deploy beacons at airports and encourage the airline community to participate.

Featured resources

Beacon technology has been hailed as a game-changer in retail. It uses Bluetooth to trigger the display of information on phones and tablets that is relevant to the specific location and context of the...

Beacons continuously broadcast a signal giving shoppers additional product information, directions around the store and even enabling hands-free payments - so no more queuing. But do they really work in...